Monkeys exhibit human-like gaze biases in economic decisions
Abstract
In economic decision-making individuals choose between items based on their perceived value. For both humans and nonhuman primates, these decisions are often carried out while shifting gaze between the available options. Recent studies in humans suggest that these shifts in gaze actively influence choice, manifesting as a bias in favor of the items that are viewed first, viewed last, or viewed for the overall longest duration in a given trial. This suggests a mechanism that links gaze behavior to the neural computations underlying value-based choices. In order to identify this mechanism, it is first necessary to develop and validate a suitable animal model of this behavior. To this end, we have created a novel value-based choice task for macaque monkeys that captures the essential features of the human paradigms in which gaze biases have been observed. Using this task, we identified gaze biases in the monkeys that were both qualitatively and quantitatively similar to those in humans. In addition, the monkeys' gaze biases were well-explained using a sequential sampling model framework previously used to describe gaze biases in humans-the first time this framework has been used to assess value-based decision mechanisms in nonhuman primates. Together, these findings suggest a common mechanism that can explain gaze-related choice biases across species, and open the way for mechanistic studies to identify the neural origins of this behavior.
Data availability
All data and code used for the analyses and figures included in the present manuscript have been uploaded as an Open Science Framework project (and a linked GitHub account). These files can be accessed at: https://osf.io/hkgmn/
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Deans Dissertation Fellowship)
- Shira M Lupkin
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Academic Advancement Fund)
- Shira M Lupkin
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Graduate Assistantship through the Behavioral and Neural Sciences Graduate Program)
- Shira M Lupkin
Whitehall Foundation
- Vincent B McGinty
Biomedical Research Foundation (Busch Biomedical Research Foundation)
- Vincent B McGinty
National Institute on Drug Abuse (K01-DA-036659-01)
- Vincent B McGinty
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures were in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (2011)and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees of both Stanford University (APLAC Protocol #9720) and Rutgers University-Newark (PROTO999900861). Surgeries to implant orthopedic head restraints were conducted using full surgical anesthesia using aseptic techniques and instruments, and with analgesics and antibiotics given pre-, intra-, and post-operatively as appropriate.
Reviewing Editor
- Erin L Rich, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
Version history
- Preprint posted: February 26, 2022 (view preprint)
- Received: February 26, 2022
- Accepted: July 25, 2023
- Accepted Manuscript published: July 27, 2023 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: August 29, 2023 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2023, Lupkin & McGinty
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 497
- Page views
-
- 72
- Downloads
-
- 1
- Citations
Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, PubMed Central, Scopus.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Acid-sensing ion channels (ASICs) are trimeric proton-gated sodium channels. Recent work has shown that these channels play a role in necroptosis following prolonged acidic exposure like occurs in stroke. The C-terminus of ASIC1a is thought to mediate necroptotic cell death through interaction with receptor interacting serine threonine kinase 1 (RIPK1). This interaction is hypothesized to be inhibited at rest via an interaction between the C- and N-termini which blocks the RIPK1 binding site. Here, we use two transition metal ion FRET methods to investigate the conformational dynamics of the termini at neutral and acidic pH. We do not find evidence that the termini are close enough to be bound while the channel is at rest and find that the termini may modestly move closer together during acidification. At rest, the N-terminus adopts a conformation parallel to the membrane about 10 Å away. The distal end of the C-terminus may also spend time close to the membrane at rest. After acidification, the proximal portion of the N-terminus moves marginally closer to the membrane whereas the distal portion of the C-terminus swings away from the membrane. Together these data suggest that a new hypothesis for RIPK1 binding during stroke is needed.
-
- Neuroscience
Decisions under uncertainty are often biased by the history of preceding sensory input, behavioral choices, or received outcomes. Behavioral studies of perceptual decisions suggest that such history-dependent biases affect the accumulation of evidence and can be adapted to the correlation structure of the sensory environment. Here, we systematically varied this correlation structure while human participants performed a canonical perceptual choice task. We tracked the trial-by-trial variations of history biases via behavioral modeling and of a neural signature of decision formation via magnetoencephalography (MEG). The history bias was flexibly adapted to the environment and exerted a selective effect on the build-up (not baseline level) of action-selective motor cortical activity during decision formation. This effect added to the impact of the current stimulus. We conclude that the build-up of action plans in human motor cortical circuits is shaped by dynamic prior expectations that result from an adaptive interaction with the environment.